Thomas Derrick

Thomas Derrick was an English executioner during the Elizabethan Era.

Derrick served as a sailor in the Royal Navy during the Anglo-Spanish war and under the command of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, he took part in the capture of Cádiz. After the sack of the city, Derrick was one of 24 sailors sentenced to death by hanging, after they were convicted of committing rapes against local women. Since none of the other soldiers were willing to execute the delinquents, the Earl of Essex pardoned Derrick on the condition that he executed his co-accused. Derrick did so with startling efficiency on one of the fleet's ships, by using blocks to string up the men on the spar.

In English history, executioner was not a commonly chosen career path because of the risk of friends and families of the deceased knowing who the executioner was and where to find him. Executioners were sometimes coerced into the role and following the fleet's return to England, Derrick became an executioner at Tyburn. Derrick executed more than 3,000 people in his career, including his pardoner, the Earl of Essex, when he was convicted of treason in 1601. As a nobleman, the Earl of Essex was allowed to choose his own execution method and opted to be beheaded via axe. Derrick, unused to the sharp tool as a hangman, took three strokes to decapitate Essex.

Derrick devised a beam with a topping lift and pulleys for his hangings, instead of the old-fashioned rope over the beam method in use since 1388. Around 1610, he constructed a gallows with which over a dozen people could be hanged at the same time. The word derrick became an eponym for the frame from which the hangman's noose was supported and through that usage (by analogy) to modern day cranes. Derrick was also the first executioner to be subject of a ballad in the English-speaking world.